Home > Morning Joe Panel Slams Trump's Speech For Being "Packed With Lies And Innuendos"

Morning Joe Panel Slams Trump's Speech For Being "Packed With Lies And Innuendos"

Eugene Robinson: "The Thing About Trump's Speeches These Days Is That It's Just Lie After Lie After Lie"

From the June 14 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): What's stupid is that the misstatements are extraordinary. I mean talking about a flooding in. How many Syrian refugees have come to the United States?

STEVE RATTNER: Less than 3,000.

SCARBOROUGH: Less than 3,000.

MIKE BARNICLE: Twenty-eight hundred.

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah less than 3,000. Also saying Hillary Clinton --

MIKA BRZEZINSKI (CO-HOST): He was completely incorrect and inflated in his statements.

SCARBOROUGH: And also the comment that Hillary Clinton wants to take away the Second Amendment. It's just a lie.

RATTNER: The Washington Post in the third paragraph of a front page news story starts a paragraph saying, "In a speech laden with falsehoods and exaggerations."

[CROSSTALK]

SCARBOROUGH: By the way, this is what Donald Trump said not so long ago. "I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I also support a longer waiting period to purchase guns." I think he said that back in 2000.

BRZEZINSKI: Wait.

BARNICLE: Gene, give us a verbal column right now, contrasting the two candidates that you just saw.

EUGENE ROBINSON: Well, you have a reasonable, thoughtful, measured candidate for the highest office in the nation who laid out a plan, who called for Americans as we do to come together in the face of a common threat. And you have a raving lunatic on the other side whose, it was just a string of lies. The thing about Trump's speeches these days is that it's just lie after lie after lie. There's falsehoods and exaggerations. That's kind of journalise for just flat out lies that he tells all of the time. And it's frustrating in that sense to try to cover them, but you know what, I think TheWashington Post is going to continue to cover Donald Trump, even if we can't ride with him on the plane.

[...]

SCARBOROUGH: Talk about a tale of two candidates yesterday. One practicing conspiracy theories. Other is talking about a multilayered approach. Even if if you disagree with some of the things that Hillary Clinton suggested, at least it was a serious policy speech instead of a speech that was packed with lies and innuendos about the president being part of a conspiracy.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well this is why we're having trouble in journalism these days, because we haven't really faced a situation in which one of the candidates for president is issuing policy papers and trying, maybe sometimes failing, but trying to lay out plans that have nuance and sophistication and complexity. And the other is just winging it. There's no policy. There's just spleen. There's just invective and there's just mischaracterizations of the opponent. And just no awareness of the impact of his words on national security.

SCARBOROUGH: Jeffrey, how staggering with what he said about how many Syrian refuges we brought into this country? And then following up with that's stupid when, as Mike said, the number is closer to 2,800. What number did he say?

BARNICLE: He said thousands but it's 2,800.

GOLDBERG: He said thousands and he said a 500 percent increase. The whole thing is a non sequitur because the guy who did this in Orlando that prompted the speech was born in Queens, where Donald Trump, by the way, was born.